What is a GSA Contract?

Under the GSA Schedules Program, GSA establishes long-term government-wide contracts that allow federal buyers to acquire products and services directly from pre-qualified commercial suppliers.

To become a GSA Schedule contractor, a contractor must submit an offer to the appropriate GSA Schedule solicitation. The GSA awards contracts to responsible and established companies offering their products and/or services, which fall within the generic descriptions in the GSA Schedule Solicitations.

The GSA Solicitation will find it’s way to a GSA Contracting Officer, to determine whether prices are fair and reasonable in comparison to the prices that a company offers to commercial customers. This negotiation objective is commonly known as “most favored customer” pricing. In order to make an apples-to-apples comparison, the GSA requires each offeror to provide commercial pricelists and disclose information regarding their commercial pricing and discounting practices.

Along with the GSA solicitation and price lists, there are also required and schedule-specific documents that must be properly completed. These can include customer evaluations, attachments to the GSA solicitation, and more.

GSA Contracting officers are known to request that a company interested in a GSA Contract seek the help or services of a specialist such as GSA Schedule Services. GSA Contracting officers are very busy folks, and are not available to teach or train on GSA Contract acquisition, so they prefer that a professional company handles the GSA solicitation preparation. Frequently, a contracting officer has to correspond with an applying company so frequently, that it becomes too time-consuming for a the contracting officer, which results in a third revision rejection. This is when a company’s solicitation is rejected and the company must wait an allotted time period before they an even re-apply, starting again from square one.

Getting on schedule with a GSA Contract is an investment, which means that it is not free. The cost of the GSA contract is minimal, but it is very difficult to acquire one yourself because of the lengthy and confusing process. This is why GSA Schedule Services exists, to get companies like yours into the federal marketing game.

Related: Should My Company Get a GSA Contract?